This past week, the biggest box office hit of last year was released on Blu-ray and DVD. I am, of course, talking about "Star Wars Episode Seven: The Force Awakens." No movie has had this type of pressure to be good, and in this writer’s opinion, The Force Awakens was a very enjoyable movie experience that brought me back to that galaxy far far away. But this is not a movie review, this is speculation on where The Force Awakens ranks among the other six films and what to expect in this new trilogy.
To start off, I am just going to come out and say where I think Star Wars Seven ranks among the franchise. I believe that it is the fourth best movie, behind The Empire Strikes Back, A New Hope, Return Of The Jedi and in front of Revenge Of The Sith, The Phantom Menace and Attack Of The Clones. So to make things clear let's just list out my Star Wars movie rankings.
In order of best to worst:
- Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
- Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
- Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
- Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
- Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
- Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
- Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
Now let m explain why Episode Seven is where it is, yes J.J. Abrams did a great job with the latest film, but there is a reason why the original trilogy is referred to as “the holy trilogy”. George Lucas, even though he has seemed to not be able to catch a break lately, delivered a near perfect trilogy of films. There are certain things however, that Force Awakens did that Lucas did not. In all of Lucas’s films, we would get bad guys that where evil just because it seems. However, when fans were introduced to Kylo Ren we saw something different.
Fans have never seen a character that was struggling to fight off the temptation of the light side of the force as opposed to seeing Anakin Skywalker being tempted by the dark side of the force in the prequels. Even though Kylo Ren did appear at times to be that weird kid we all know from high school, we have never seen a layered villain in Star Wars. How is Kylo Ren layered? Well, for the reason I stated before, and the fact that he is still in training, when we saw Darth Vader he was a master of the dark side of the force, when we saw Darth Maul, we could tell he mastery with a lightsaber and the force even though he was not a master. What I’m saying is, we might actually see the growth of a great villain which would make us as fans appreciate him more. With such groundwork for the protagonist Kylo Ren might be a villain that stills the show for fans in the upcoming films.
Speaking of the upcoming films, lets talk about that shall we? Now, with the ending of The Force Awakens, we can kind of see where Episode Eight will be going, we will see Rey and Kylo Ren as they both train with Luke Skywalker and Snoke respectively. This sort of thing will remind us of Yoda in Empire Strikes Back. I would love to see some more battles between the Resistance and the First Order. However what I would love to see the most is the reunion of the classic characters when I say classic characters I mean Luke, Leia, Chewbacca and heck i wouldn't mind seeing Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin as force ghosts. But that's just some suggestions from a life long fan.
